


i'm getting static from my better sense

by errantgods



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew Struggles To Ignore How Much Everything Is All The Time, Gen, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, Therapy, andrew-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 20:42:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19048039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/errantgods/pseuds/errantgods
Summary: “Okay,” Bee says, “we’re going to try something.” Unlike their one-on-one sessions, where Bee never demands anything from Andrew, just tries to draw him out of himself, Bee is very demanding when it’s Aaron and him. She’s giving them a common enemy, an external target for years of impotent frustration, which is both amusingly transparent and frustratingly effective.“I want you each to choose one word to describe your partners, and then I want you to talk about them. Aaron?”Her transparent ploy only works because Aaron and he both want this to work. Mortifying.





	i'm getting static from my better sense

**Author's Note:**

> kind of a companion piece to the one (1) other fic i've ever written?? i swear i was a neil josten stan but here i am thinking constantly about andrew learning to allow himself to Feel...
> 
> also title is from hide by rainbow kitten surprise, which is the rawest song in existence

It’s late on a Wednesday afternoon, so Andrew is sitting in Bee’s office, giving himself a moment to pretend his twin doesn’t exist before they both grab their pitchforks and start trying to find some old forgotten wound in the other to poke at.

They’ve been at this game of wreck and recovery for months, and much to Andrew’s dismay it’s getting harder to resist the prodding to  _ open up for fuck’s sake _ . 

Right now, it’s late June, Aaron isn’t staying in Columbia with the Monsters, and they didn’t even fucking talk last Wednesday because Andrew refuses to come see Aaron around his summer classes or acknowledge Katelyn, and Aaron refuses to come out to Columbia if it means seeing Neil.

But they’re both here, so.

Bee smiles challengingly and looks between them. Bee, Andrew has discovered, possesses a full resume of silences, pulling each out for a different occasion, to a different end. Today, she starts their session by instating a silence that, like a low flame in an airtight room, seems to slowly draw the breath out of their lungs.

Andrew’s familiar with this routine; he’s fine with not being able to breathe. He’s more interested to see how Aaron reacts.

Aaron, so tense he’s almost sucking energy from the couch they reluctantly share, isn’t flinching yet. Abruptly, Andrew realizes how similar their responses are, how visibly  _ same _ they are, and it makes him want to break something. They shouldn’t be cut from the same cloth. This sameness is a failure, and the fact that anyone can bear witness, Bee, Nicky,  _ Neil _ , to that sameness makes him want to--he stops himself before he does something reckless.

Andrew can feel the way they’re stoking the tension, feeding Bee’s invisible fire, and he’s coiling, ready to leave and drive back to Columbia and stay there for the rest of the summer. He wants to stay there forever. He wants to convince Neil to run away one last time so he never has to deal with this shit again. He wants to get behind the wheel of his stupid-expensive car and drive it through every fucking building on the eastern seaboard.

Aaron breaks first, explosively. “Fuck you.”

Bee nods. This, of course, is excellent: the Minyards are communicating. Aaron, having spoken his piece, begins to relax, leaning back on the couch, but this almost seems fun now.

Andrew, adjusting his posture to something more casual and disinterested, casts a mild glance at his twin that could be read as both amused and bored, and begins to relax too.

Bee changes the stakes. She meets Andrew’s eye knowingly--not reproachfully, just in a way that cuts down his artificially amped-up glee--before turning to Aaron. “Why?”

Aaron stares at her askance, flabbergasted, incredulous, as though being moved to near-unspeakable rage by Andrew is just a fact of knowing him, which Andrew personally finds very flattering. “Him and his fucking boyfriend.”

Which, no, he’s not Andrew’s--that’s not--he doesn’t want to hear that, doesn’t want to hear that from Aaron, like that. He doesn’t say anything, forcibly relaxes again, refusing to rise to the bait.

Bee turns back to Andrew, looks at him expectantly to explain his side of this particular conflict.

So he picks a fight. “He’s the one who wanted me to choose Neil over him so he could have  _ her _ . I can’t help it if he’s having second thoughts now.”

It’s like leaving a gas stove on and lighting a cigarette; Aaron explodes. “Fuck you.” A pause. “You know damn well I don’t want that shit back. We’ve fucking  _ talked _ about this, Andrew. It’s not a zero-sum game: I want Katelyn  _ and _ ,” he gestures wildly in the direction of Andrew, the word Minyard hanging in the air between them like an unwanted, well. Child.

The silence feels less dangerous than talking now.

“Okay,” Bee says, “we’re going to try something.” Unlike their one-on-one sessions, where Bee never demands anything from Andrew, just tries to draw him out of himself, Bee is very demanding when it’s Aaron and him. She’s giving them a common enemy, an external target for years of impotent frustration, which is both amusingly transparent and frustratingly effective. 

“I want you each to choose one word to describe your partners, and then I want you to talk about them. Aaron?”

Her transparent ploy only works because Aaron and he both  _ want _ this to work. Mortifying.

Aaron, of course, is eager to talk about Katelyn, spiteful and stubborn in his determination to force Andrew to accept her if it kills them both. He ponders this for a moment, staring at his hands, before he says, “Good.”

Andrew snorts. Aaron glares at him, clenching his fists. Andrew translates for his benefit, “What the fuck does that mean?” He sneers, “ _ Good _ .”

And the thing is, Andrew is working through his more serious problems, like, say, his urge to kill women who get anywhere near his brother. He knows Katelyn isn’t going to hurt Aaron. Probably. He knows this isn’t about  _ her _ , that it’s about the stupid fucking deals that he’s made and broken and renegotiated. But this whole thing is so fucking ridiculous.  _ Good _ .

“Yeah,  _ good _ ,” Aaron says, doubling down, stepping up to the challenge. “Like, I don’t know, I can live my life without hurting anyone.” Andrew wonders if that includes himself. Aaron continues, “Like I’m not a total fucking disaster, like I can deal with shit without self-destructing or doing anything really fucking dangerous. Like she’s got my back.”

“Andrew?” Bee prompts him, waiting for him to push Aaron again.

Andrew’s busy thinking about a conversation he had with Neil way back when, about who was watching his back if he was watching everyone else’s. He nods, ends this line of inquiry.

“How does Neil make you feel, Andrew?”

And, okay, fuck, he should’ve just kept pushing Aaron until the session ended. He hates this, how Aaron always pushes back on this  _ one _ thing among all things. He says the first word that comes to mind: “Stupid.”

Aaron almost chokes on his own incredulous scoff. “Jesus fucking Christ. And you  _ wonder _ why I don’t fucking trust him.”

“That’s not--” Andrew starts, only to be cut off.

“Then what, Andrew? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? How the fuck am I supposed to take that? How is  _ anyone _ supposed to take that?”

Andrew thinks, briefly, humiliatingly, petulantly, that _Neil_ would understand this without pushing him to give up every last bit of his dignity.

He’s already tired of this conversation, pissed, so he rises to Aaron’s bait. “Did I interrupt you, asshole? No?” He lets the silence hang for a moment.

“I  _ mean _ , I  _ know _ it’s a bad idea, I fucking  _ know _ , Jesus,” and he can’t even say what ‘it’ is. Incredible. “I  _ mean _ , I know exactly what could go wrong, every stupid little thing that could happen that could leave me hanging out to dry and make me wish I’d never fucking come to this stupid fucking state,” which is definitely too much information, fuck, fuck, fuck, “but then, against all of that, there’s just. There’s him.” Fuck.

Something hurts in the back of his throat, and he’s gripping one hand in the other with intent to protect, or break, or restrain some larger, more violent, more dangerous motion, but he  _ will not _ back down on this. He looks Aaron in the eye, tries not to blink, watches Aaron search his face for something that Andrew has carefully stowed away from prying eyes. 

They stare at each other for what absolutely qualifies as too goddamn long before Bee breaks in with her eminently reasonable real-world advice.

“Andrew? Aaron? Why don’t you try meeting somewhere neutral? Take out the territorial aspect, and the four of you--or the six, if Nicky and Kevin are included--can feel it out. How does that sound?”

Aaron breaks their staring match, and says, doubtfully, “I’m willing if he is.”

Andrew looks out the window, thinking about how Neil, and, he guesses, Kevin, have probably already made it from the Court back to the parking lot and are waiting for him right now. “I think I know a place. Shitty restaurant between here and Columbia.”

Bee claps her hands. “It’s a double date then! I’ll see both of you same time next week. Have a good evening.” 

Officially dismissed, Aaron leaves the room in the blink of an eye, and Andrew follows at a notably more sedate pace. He’s surprised to find Aaron waiting impassively outside the door, but accepts his presence without comment as he makes his way to the parking lot.

Aaron threatens Andrew to work out the details over text tonight. At a modest distance, Aaron spares Neil only a mildly derisive glance instead of the more dangerous three-second battles of wills of recent history, before breaking away to seek out Katelyn somewhere quiet and studious.

At the car, where Kevin is pouting in the backseat and Neil is leaned arrogantly against the driver’s side door, Neil wolf whistles. Andrew privately vows to kill Dan and Allison for teaching him that. “You must be working miracles in there.”

Andrew situates himself menacingly close to Neil, almost nose to nose. He levels a stare at him, determined to look nowhere but his eyes. It’s supposed to be a glare, but for reasons too horrifying to contemplate it comes out much less murderous than he wants it to. 

Neil takes one look at his face, and probably sees more than Andrew realized he could express. With a resolute nod to himself, Neil declares, “I’m driving,” then waits patiently for Andrew to agree.

Andrew nods, and on his way to the passenger’s seat, feels himself almost floored by a desire to lie down and pull every part of his being deep inside his ribcage. How Neil saw this wave of emotion off in the distance, Andrew can’t even begin to consider, but he doesn’t say a word all the way back to Columbia, and Andrew, miraculously, keeps himself in one piece the whole time, too.


End file.
